Feds crack down on internet crime

From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

May 21st, 2003

More than 130 people and $17 million have been seized nationwide in operations by the FBI and other agencies to stop cybercrime, the U.S. Department of Justice (JD) announced May 16. Although JD officials weren’t immediately available for comment, internet safety experts agreed that students are among the most common targets for such crimes.

Attorney General John Ashcroft called the program “a decisive, nationally coordinated effort to root out and take action against some of the leading online, economic crime.” He was joined at a news conference by FBI Director Robert Mueller and other top JD officials.

Officials estimated the collective losses across more than 90 investigations at $176 million, affecting 89,000 victims.

“[Operation E-con demonstrates] we have a commitment,” said Dan Larkin, the FBI’s senior representative to the Internet Fraud and Complaint Center, based in West Virginia. “This is of high importance to the American public, who are increasingly finding themselves part of these schemes.”

In one case, suspects used a web site to sell more than $2 million worth of pharmaceutical drugs without prescriptions or the involvement of any doctors. In another case, approximately 400 victims lost about $3,000 each in a scheme that promised lonely men the hope of marrying a Russian woman.

Mueller repeatedly has stressed that cybercrime is among his priorities. Such cases can be difficult to solve, however, because they frequently involve overseas connections and digital evidence easy for perpetrators to erase or falsify.

The announcement also was designed to demonstrate that the FBI retains considerable cybercrime expertise, despite the transfer earlier this year of its flagship National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) to the new Department of Homeland Security.

Despite the loss of its NIPC computer specialists, Mueller has pledged a robust cybercrime division at FBI headquarters under Assistant FBI Director Jana Monroe. The FBI also has created what Mueller described as 60 specialized cybersquads around the country and is working to put investigators in other countries.

At the news conference, Mueller called the problem of cybercrime “large and growing,” noting that complaints increased 300 percent last year to 48,000.

Cyber criminals often target teens because of their innocence, said Teri Schroeder, founder and chief executive of i-Safe America Inc., a national nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping children safe online.

“Kids are ending up in situations they are not aware of,” Schroeder said. “These are situations that have real-life consequences.”

Schools can play a role in making students aware of the dangers that lurk online, she said, noting that i-Safe teaches kids to use the four Rs: to recognize, refuse, respond to, and report internet crimes.

The idea, she said, is to foster awareness and inform kids at an early age that steps they take online could, in fact, have dangerous consequences.